Lyn Lifshin

 

socks on a pint
bottle a loaded
32 in the small
bed:  chisel:  wino
pop husband and
highschool prize
winner on history
in hudson camping
out for the rest
of his in one room
in a shack   just
the door painted
bright red    holds
the bottle to the
light   pale sun
thru it he puts
it down   once i
could walk up
there on top of
steel now im a
bum but yes i
was king i was
sure footed as
the indians buried
under the sidewalk

 

Lyn Lifshin has published over 130 books and chapbooks including 3 from Black Sparrow Press: Cold Comfort, Before It’s Light, and Another Woman Who Looks Like Me. Before Secretariat: The Red Freak, The Miracle, Lifshin published both her prize winning book about the short lived beautiful race horse Ruffian, The Licorice Daughter: My Year With Ruffian, and Barbaro: Beyond Brokenness. Recent books include Ballroom, All the Poets Who Have Touched Me, Living and Dead. All True, Especially The Lies, Light At the End: The Jesus Poems, Katrina, Mirrors, Persephone, Lost In The Fog, Knife Edge & Absinthe: The Tango Poems, A Girl Goes into The Woods from NYQ books, Hitchcock Hotel from Danse Macabre, Tangled as the Alphabet — The Istanbul Poems from NightBallet Press, and Malala. Just out are The Marilyn Poems from Rubber Boots Press, Femme Eterna, and Moving Through Stained Glass: the Maple Poems. An update to her Gale Research Autobiography is out: Lips, Blues, Blue Lace: On The Outside. Also just released is a dvd of the documentary film: Lyn Lifshin: Not Made of Glass. Forthcoming works are: Degas’ Little Dancer, The Silk Road, and Winter Poems from Kind of a Hurricane press. Find her at www.lynlifshin.com